I’ve been coaching high school football in Redding for over 25 years, so you can trust me when I tell you that adolescent vaping is a crisis.About 4 or 5 years ago, I discovered that my star linebacker was using nicotine. I was surprised to learn that this dedicated athlete was doing something so destructive to his health — but I was even more surprised to learn that the problem went far beyond this single player. In fact, my player told me that nearly all of his teammates had tried vaping.
I used to think that widespread nicotine use at school had been left behind with the era of cigarettes and chewing tobacco. However, the truth is that the tobacco industry has been working very hard to make vapes their next cash cow.
Shasta County has one of the highest rates of kids trying tobacco in the state of California, a staggering 41.2%. Among that group, 14.8% report regularly using vapes. This is a serious problem when you consider the health risks. Nicotine is a highly addictive poison for the developing brain. It can interfere with attention and learning, increase anxiety and irritability and make the brain permanently more susceptible to addiction of all kinds…